Up till now I have experienced the highs and lows of training, the hardships and successes that come before and after grading, and the people that arrive and leave the dojo. I've enjoyed my training but I never thought I would be one of the people who would leave. There has been doubt in the back of my mind that manifested 1 year ago, that always made me question why. Why practice with no resistance, why practice with no competition, why does everyone go on about how competition only serves to boost the ego? (Do NOT answer these questions, I do not care for the answers - I've "heard it all before" - if you answer these questions I will take that as a sign that you are an illiterate and your incompetence will be forgiven.)

It was doubt that caused an internal battle within myself. In my own opinion (and from my experiences), Aikido seems to need to be believed/have faith entrusted into it for the results to show themselves. There lies the base for all my doubts. I have never been one to have faith. I consider myself to be a very logical person, relying on fact and results. I always wanted to be able to test the skills I was learning, I tested the techniques outside the dojo however the results weren't good. Inside the dojo everything seemed to work, however when I asked the Uke to add resistance I was met with the same failure. This only increased my doubts.

This continued on for quite a while, the result never changed. I felt like I was wasting my time. For those that say - "don't worry about such a thing and just practice for the sake of practice". Let me answer it this way: Deep down, when you know something isn't right and it just makes you uncomfortable that you cannot continue with what you're doing. Practice was becoming uncomfortable, ignoring the problem was difficult because it felt like I was being jabbed in the head with a needle every time.

I find it difficult to practice because the dojo practices quite different to how I prefer to practice. To which someone would say "just change dojos". I have tried other places, but the same issue is there before I have even arrived. (I have no issue with the people/instructors at any dojo, they are all wonderful people who do their best to pass on their knowledge to their students.) To be honest, it is hard to put into words what this problem is without it being misinterpreted. It just felt like what I was being told didn't fit with what I knew.

All I can say now is that after much thought and discussion with my family and with myself, I have decided to cease my Aikido practice and start training in a different martial art that I feel better suits me. Be eager to learn and practice, fight in competitions and let it mold my character.

Thanks and train hard.

Aikido in my opinion has absolutely nothing to do with faith in order to be effective, it's not a belief system of any sort.The only aspect of aikido training the requires an almost..."religious" devotion is only one:The devotion to practice the Art!There seem to be countless excuses and an almost infinite number of reasons one can think of or invent on the way in order not to practice aikido but only one reason to practice and that is...to practice!That doesn't mean practice for the sake of practice, but practice in order to get better and learn the Art.The fact that one's technique is not effective in applications outside the dojo means only need for more dojo hours and training and of course abandonment cannot solve the problem in any way.Aikido is a difficult Art to learn, but when learned correctly it's very effective for life and death situations where it realy counts.Competition has nothing to do with the spirit of Budo, it's not a subject of martial arts but a subject of fighting sports, therefore it doesn't belong here.There's a difference of course between a warrior and a sports man...